Chipotle Eyed After E. Coli Sickens Boston College Students, Basketball Team

According to a report from the Boston Inspectional Services department, which is responsible for inspecting the city’s restaurants, an employee at the Chipotle restaurant in Cleveland Circle was sick while working a shift Thursday.

The closure of the restaurant comes after Chipotle had already warned that a key sales figure is expected to fall in the fourth quarter as a result of the outbreak.

The school said it was working with local health officials to determine whether the illnesses were tied to an outbreak of E. coli that has been linked to Chipotle.

Passers-by walk near a closed Chipotle restaurant on Monday, Dec. 7, 2015, in the Cleveland Circle neighborhood of Boston. The outbreak began in October, in OR and Washington, and has grown to include 52 people in nine states.

In other words, Chipotle not only has an E. coli problem for which there is no known culprit as of right now, but may also have a cleanliness problem at its restaurants, said industry experts.

THe company says it thinks the Boston College illnesses are an isolated case of norovirus and unrelated to the E. coli cases that have turned up in nine states.

Chipotle closed the outlet on Monday as officials suspended the location’s permit to operate and ordered a disinfection process. The symptoms often start out slow, such as mild stomach pain or non-bloody diarrhea that becomes worse over the succeeding days.

In its annual report, Chipotle has noted it may be at a higher risk for outbreaks of food-borne illnesses because of its “fresh produce and meats rather than frozen, and our reliance on employees cooking with traditional methods rather than automation”.

Sales plummeted by as much as 22 percent as additional cases were reported, and were down 16 percent for all of November.

The norovirus causes 20 million cases of gastrointestinal illness in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“From a consumer perspective, it must look like there are a lot more food safety challenges out there”, said Chris Morrison, chief marketing officer of Trace One, which helps other companies map out their supply chains. Many cases of less unsafe illnesses like the norovirus, which Chipotle claims is the cause of the cases in Boston.

“It’s going to cost money”, said CFO Jack Hartung.